1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the general area of concern and technology known as waste disposal systems which minimize environmental pollution, and more particularly, to systems for disposing of large volumes of industrial and municipal waste materials in a way such that minimal environmental pollution occurs over extended periods of time, yet such wastes are retained in an accessible condition for potential usage in present or future industrial or commercial processes.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
In the United States, concerns have mounted rapidly in recent years over the ecological consequences of disposal methods employed by municipalities and industries in disposing of industrial by-products having either no apparent utility, or having a present utility such that disposal is generally more economic than utilization. Governmental agencies as well as private groups concerned with ecological balance and environmental pollution have brought legislative and judicial sanctions to bear upon many producers of waste which have required the investment of substantial sums, both in research and development for the purpose of investigating new and improved waste disposal methods, and in the installation and utilization of disposal systems which satisfy the much more stringent requirements and limitations which have now been imposed on entities which generate and are responsible for the production of such wastes.
To perhaps a lesser extent, the concerns for safe and ecologically feasible waste disposal have also been manifested in other countries throughout the world.
For the most part, waste disposal systems for the accommodation and satisfactory disposition of industrial and municipal waste, as they have been conceived and implemented to the present time, are still ultimately concerned with non-utilitarian disposition of such materials--that is, placing them in an isolated and contained context, without any further expectation of any useful consumption of these materials bearing upon the design of such disposal facilities. The disposal facilities which are in use range from sanitary landfills, to dumping grounds where no particular restrictions or limitations upon the debris and refuse dumped are imposed, to incineration with attendant restrictions on the tendency to atmospheric pollution, to burial at sea with unknown consequences over extended periods of time with respect to the marine fauna and flora affected. Chemical treatment is also used in some instances to undertake to detoxify or neutralize toxic and otherwise deleterious chemicals prevalent in certain waste materials, with the attendant expense of such chemical treatment representing no economic credit to the disposing concern, but being carried out primarily to meet sanitation and ecological requirements. Particularly perplexing to industries which develop radioactive waste materials in the course of their operation have been the problems attendant upon the safe, long-term disposition of such wastes from which radioactive emanations continue to originate over a period of many years.